Lindsay Lohan's Lifetime movie is a joy and a gift.
Grant Bowler, left, as Richard Burton; Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor. via Lifetime
I cannot lie: I had a fantastic time watching Liz & Dick. It is absolutely terrible and hysterically funny – who can ask for more during these troubled times? Purporting to tell the tale of the great celebrity romance of the last century, Lifetime’s “story” of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton exists only on the level of spectacle, but it’s an eye-popping one. Lindsay Lohan’s voice is devolving into Kathleen Turner registers with alarming rapidity, and Grant Bowler is asked to act with the worst hair I’ve seen on screen since Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July. I’d also argue the two of them don’t humiliate themselves by the end. But maybe the movie made me actually insane. It’s possible!
Here is a list of the things in Liz & Dick that made me laugh, in order. There are, uh, spoilers, but please. It is not that sort of movie. It airs on Sunday at 9.
1) The opening credits are over a series of images of the two stars in full Taylor and Burton regalia. My clear favorite was Burton holding a skull as Hamlet. Alas indeed. (True Blood fans: Bowler played Cooter.)
2) Many of the reviews, including the now famous one by my friend Tim Goodman in The Hollywood Reporter (famous because Lindsay Lohan said she refuses to read it because it’s too mean) have derided Liz & Dick’s horrific narrative device of Liz and Dick addressing the viewer directly about their relationship while wearing all black on a black set. These interstitials begin immediately, and man: what a mistake. It’s so false and creates such an impossible hurdle and the look reminded me of Mummenschanz. Do young people know what Mummenschanz is? Probably not. They were a surrealist Swiss theater group who had a Broadway show in the late ‘70s. They literally scared me.